DID YOU KNOW: Estrada impeachment trial?

On Dec. 7, 2000, the impeachment trial against President Joseph Estrada began. A first in Philippine
history, it ended in January 2001 when House prosecutors withdrew from the trial. Millions
immediately assembled on Edsa, leading to a second People Power revolution that led to Estrada’s
ouster. —MARIELLE MEDINA, INQUIRER RESEARCH

THE IMPEACHMENT trial of former President Joseph Estrada, the first in Philippine history,
began on Dec. 7, 2000. It lasted for 23 days and ended on Jan. 16, 2001, when House prosecutors
withdrew from the trial. People Power II followed immediately, leading to Estrada’s ouster. He was
tried by the Sandiganbayan which found him guilty of plunder on Sept. 12, 2007 but President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, pardoned him a month later. Marielle Medina, Inquirer Research

Rich social lessons from Estrada pardon

“I’m not against pardon per se, I’m against the undue haste to grant it.” Thus Special Prosecutor
Dennis Villa-Ignacio explains his objection to President Gloria Arroyo’s executive clemency for
predecessor Joseph Estrada. He rues that it came only one month after Estrada’s life sentencing
for plunder: “we should have let the lesson of that court ruling sink into the public psyche first”.
Also, that the commutation was done in such a hurry that it took only two hours from Arroyo’s
signing to Estrada’s release from “rest house arrest”. “They broke procedure,” cries Villa-Ignacio,
who had led the six-year trial of the first president to be charged with the heinous crime. “Their
own rule is for the Board of Paroles and Pardons to deliberate first if clemency is appropriate and
so to be recommended to the President. The Board has to determine if the convict is remorseful
and, as proof, has recompensed society for his misdeed.”

Estrada, according to Villa-Ignacio, has yet to return close to a billion pesos that the Sandiganbayan
had ruled was his illegal take from gambling. In the government’s rush to pardon a still popular
politico, he adds, it broke the constitutional rule that such actions do not cover impeachment cases.
The guilty verdict may have stemmed from criminal charges filed by the Ombudsman in Apr. 2001,
but the charges had come from his impeachment in Nov. 2000, just that a people power revolt cut
the trial short. And so Villa-Ignacio is asking the Supreme Court to nullify Arroyo’s swift gift to
Estrada.

“But that’s that,” counters Rene Saguisag, former senator and one of Estrada’s lawyers. Pardon is
the President’s exclusive power as stated in the Constitution. Whether she grants it fast or not is
her prerogative alone. No one may question her for it, Saguisag says in belittling Villa-Ignacio’s plea
to the Supreme Court.

About indemnity, Estradas counsels say the government is entitled to the P2,000 or so that’s left in
Estrada’s alias Jose Velarde bank account. In their interpretation, Estrada must recompense
society only with what the government could get its hands on upon commencement of trial.

As lawyers, Saguisag says, they would have wanted to fight out also in the Supreme Court Estrada’s
earlier motion to reverse his sentencing. “But we were not the ones in prison,” he quickly adds, “We
were not the ones left contemplating our future from the lonely confines of our cell.” And so they
worked on the client’s desire for early freedom. Estrada had claimed earlier that, in accepting
Arroyo’s pardon, he was deferring to his lawyers’ wisdom. But it does not matter anymore whose
idea it was to beg for mercy, so long as he got out.

It is pointless to root out Arroyo’s motive in granting swift pardon. If it was to deflect political flak
from new findings of corruption and bribery by her administration, only she would know. What her
spokesman said is that it’s consistent with her compassionate policy of commuting sentences of
convicts who have reached age 70. And he too says the grant of pardon can no longer be questioned
or revoked.

What is left now is for society to reflect on the alternate lessons of the pardon. One is that the
Philippines at one point of its history had mustered the courage to indict a former President. It was
but right because that man had enriched himself not only through jueteng payolas but also from
illegal commissions from stock deals using public SSS and GSIS money.

But an accompanying second lesson is that the Philippine justice system was not strong enough to
insist that the indictee, for the duration of his trial, be committed to a real jail instead of a
hospital suite or his hillside rest house. By contrast, far progressive Korea convicted two ex-
presidents who were manacled and clad in prisoner attire.

And of course a third final lesson is one that Filipinos already know: the rich and powerful can
commit crime yet extract absolute pardon, while the poor must languish in jail. Dominga Manalili, a
low ranking BIR clerk, was the first ever to be convicted of plunder; she is still in jail facing a life
term, but who remembers her?

With such lessons, the Philippines will continue to trail behind its neighbors. Business will continue
to be sluggish, stunted by an atmosphere of injustice and political inequity. More Filipinos will seek
work abroad where real jobs are, and their remittances will continue to be used as proof of
economic progress. Corruption will go on in high places, and down the bureaucracy as a matter of
example. Filipinos will continue to sell their votes to the highest bidders who will oppress them till
the next elections. The country will continue to be hopeless as ever.

Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo

Magistrate Judge Kuo was appointed on October 9, 2015. She received a B.A. summa cum laude in
history from Yale University in 1985 and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1988.

Judge Kuo clerked for the Honorable Judith W. Rogers with the D.C. Court of Appeals. From 1989
until 1993, she served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia. From
1994 to 1998, she was a trial attorney and then Acting Deputy Chief of the Civil Rights Division
Criminal Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she investigated and prosecuted hate
crimes and allegations of police misconduct throughout the United States. From 1998 to 2002,
Judge Kuo prosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity at the United Nations International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. Her historic trial regarding
mass rape in Bosnia became the subject of the documentary film, “I Came To Testify,” part of the
series Women, War & Peace.
Upon her return to New York, Judge Kuo became litigation counsel at Wilmer Hale, LLP. In 2005,
she was appointed Chief Hearing Officer at the New York Stock Exchange, where she presided
over hearings involving violations of federal securities laws. From 2011 until her appointment to the
bench, she was Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel of the New York City Office of
Administrative Trials and Hearings, the largest municipal tribunal in the country.

Judge Kuo was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States at the age of three. She was
awarded a German Chancellor Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1993 to
study the German criminal justice system. She is a former President of the Federal Bar Council
American Inn of Court, an active member of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, and
former Vice-Chair of Manhattan Legal Services.